Monday, August 1, 2011

Bumble Pj's, room 1008 and the mystery of what I can eat for dinner....

After resting for 3 full days in Chaing Mai, it got to Saturday. Myself and Nikki were supposed to leave here on Friday, but as there isn’t any more decent medical services in Laos or Cambodia, where we should be we decided to stay here till I was fully recovered. We made a promise to visit the hospital here on Friday, if I wasn’t fully better, but somehow, because of me, that dragged to Saturday, today. So we were up and out by 9am and after a short walk, I was being looked over again by a nice doctor before lunchtime. This was different from Bangkok though. I feel quite a bit better, but still really run down, so I thought it was a waste of time and that he would say 'You are nearly better, 2 more days rest and you will be fine'. But alas not. The bugar admitted me for an overnight stay and soon after lunch I was in a nice private room, hooked up to a drip. Before this though I was wheeled about in a wheelchair – 'in case I collapsed', (I had walked the mile or so to the hospital, so 10 yards will not harm), so I told the bloke pushing me to take a break, got up and wandered around myself, with a few glaring looks from the nurses who had got the wheelchair bloke. I always said, if I need to be pushed around or drive an electric wheelchair thing, then just shoot me – I mean it!

About 3pm I was in my bed in room 1008 when my results came back from yet another blood and urine test. I was being told that my white cell count is still bloody high and not to eat or drink anything as I will be having an ultrasound test on my liver as something to do with that is also showing high in the tests, as it was in Bangkok where it was overlooked. On a brighter note the drip seems to be working- I just had a piss and surprisingly, it was actually piss coloured – that’s a bonus!! Could be worse I suppose. Like I keep saying, I feel much better than I did!!

just arrived in my hospital room

the view over chiang mai

for my fever - it actually helped and was pretty good, till i took it off, then my head was boiling!

Its now nearly 9pm, I'm still in Hospital, but at least the Ultrasound didn’t show anything wrong with my liver and other organs....Not that can be seen on a scan anyway. My liver has abnormal readings of something or other, but no one knows why yet. For now I’m back on another lot of antibiotics (the doctors way of covering all the bases when they don’t know what the fuck is going on) I started to has a little crash just after the ultrasound – the usual headache, aches and shivers, but so far, touch wood, its nothing as bad as it has been. I just want to wake up fine tomorrow and get the hell of out here and see some of the world. I'm supposed to be travelling, not holed up is a fucking bed, wearing pyjamas with bumble bees on!! Grrrrr!

Its now Monday, late afternoon and it is pissing down outside. The weekend has pretty much flown by with about 100 visits from various nurses to change my drip – either the antibiotics or the saline, or to ask me what I want for dinner only to come back 5 minutes later that I cant have what I want because I have diarrhoea (I could eat a bloody table and at the moment my guts would liquidise it, so I don’t get why I cant have oramge juice or chicken!!)

The nurses have been really nice actually. They have a laugh when they come in to check my vitals, every couple of hours and they never complain when I buzz them cos the alarm is sounding on the drip. I did manage to get a shower yesterday too, once I had been stripped by a nurse and told to sit down on the shower seat, before I politely refused, asked her to leave and stood up to give myself a shower and a wash. The 2 nights have been comfortable enough – I had some sleep, even though the nurses come in about 2am to check my vitals. Nikki has spent a lot of her time here with me, watching movies and last night we watched the Grand Prix on the internet. I also had a visit from Joel and Buffy today as they are in town. They leave tomorrow, but popped in for half an hour to say hiya, which was a nice surprise. A has been spent playing a daft online game, where as a zombie I infect the world and kill everyone, city by city – A little bit Ironic!! Plus, Nikki got me Peter Kays autobiography which is a really good read and has kept me amused most of this afternoon.

Back to the virus and we still don’t know what’s happening. My liver function is still abnormal and I am having more blood tests tomorrow so I’m expecting at least 1 more night here and probably more. I have finished my 4 bags of saline though, so at least I now have the freedom to move around without my drip trolley being dragged or pushed everywhere. I still have the needle thing in my arm though, so that they can administer whatever drug they want when they want to. I have a headache, and still sore muscles. No real difference from when I arrived here on Saturday. I hope that tomorrow tests will at least show something, that can point them in the right direction.